e
the ticking of a clock, and under the scalp a portion of bone seemed to
move. And yet he was not threatened with unconsciousness; on the
contrary he felt very wide awake: shaken though he was, ideas positively
bubbled in his brain, his whole being effervesced. For a moment a fear
flickered across his mind that he was going mad. But if so it was a
wholly pleasurable sensation, for though his fancy went at a gallop, it
was orderly, logical, and consecutive, not like madness at all. He
dismissed the notion; but further reflection confirmed him in his
determination not to tell anybody; he did not want to explain how he had
walked upstairs fancying himself a steeplejack. It would have sounded
stupid.

Then all at once he felt very sick and giddy, and going to the couch he
lay down on it, and there, finding relief in the horizontal position, he
fell fast asleep.

When he awoke an hour later his head, except for an extreme local
tenderness, felt all right again; but when he tested it the faint
ticking sound was still there. His mind was now calm; his thoughts no
longer went at a gallop, but they seemed--what was the word?--freer,
more articulate, more at his beck and call; and in spirit he was far
less harassed and anxious. Altogether he felt that he possessed himself
more than he had ever done before: his mental views had become more
open.

Then he remembered that he wanted to see his son Max, and talk to him
about certain matters; and so, after a few more tentative touches to the
back of his head to find if it was still ticking--which it was--he went
into his study, and sending for one of his secretaries, got a message
despatched. And only when he was well on in the routine of his
afternoon's labors did he recollect that he had not lunched.

That break in the regularity of his habits seemed almost an adventure;
but as he did not now feel hungry he plodded on, for this was his day of
the week for signing accumulated arrears of documents, and several
hundreds awaited him. So for a couple of hours he worked as regularly
and monotonously as a bank-clerk, and while he was signing the less
important papers, and passing them to one of his secretaries to be
blotted and sorted, another read out to him those of which he wished to
learn the contents.

This duty was generally performed by the Comptroller-General himself;
but to-day he was missing, and the King, left to make his own selection,
was rather startled to find what a